The Issue

National Crisis

There is a national alcohol crisis. However, this crisis is under-recognized because we have become numbed by the unrelenting presence of alcohol-related problems. The national alcohol crisis has become our way of life.

Up to 75% of adult presentations at Emergency Departments on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights are alcohol-related (Quigley personal correspondence)

Over 300 alcohol-related offences every day (Stevenson 2009)

Over 500 serious and fatal injury traffic crashes every year (Erasmus 2009)

At least 600 children born each year with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (May & Gossage 2001)

Over 1000 alcohol deaths in New Zealand every year (Connor et al 2005)

17,000 years of life per year are lost through alcohol (Connor et al 2005)

But, figures and statistics such as these do not adequately capture the misery, pain and loss that many New Zealand families suffer as a result of excessive alcohol use. However, they go some way in describing the awkward truth – alcohol is causing considerable damage to our society.

What is causing the crisis?

Excessive commercialisation, including aggressive marketing by large multinational liquor companies, is a key driver of the national alcohol crisis in New Zealand. Alcohol is a highly intoxicating, addictive drug that needs to be much more carefully regulated under legislation than ordinary marketable commodities, such as fruit and vegetables (Hawkes 1993). Further, information about alcohol that consumers have the right to know and that the Government would factor into its responses to the national alcohol crisis, is being kept very quiet by the alcohol industry (Bond et al 2009).